


Song Of My Soul, My Voice Is Dead

by Zygzy



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: Frustration, Gen, Psychological Trauma, Repressed Memories, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-20 18:40:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9506414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zygzy/pseuds/Zygzy
Summary: For all his many fingers, memories slipped through his grasp.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Tribute to the General that was.

He remembered many things, most of them painful. Hate is one of them. Unlike the others, it is something he can use. So he does, smashing mirrors and crushing bones, twisting metal and snapping armor. It’s a brand, heavy, hot, and oh so much more agonizing pressing into someone else. Dooku, for all his frustrating vagaries, hammered it into the fine edge of a weapon equal parts executioner’s blade and interrogator’s scalpel. Not the most useful tool at his disposal, but the most satisfying.

Driving it into a clone’s chest is just short of relieving, burying it in jedi is ecstasy.

Talahak wasn’t a developed world. There was scarcely enough cities for it to qualify as a backwater in the Outer Rim. What it lacked in population was made up for through industry vital to the Confederacy. The Republic sought to deprive them of that asset. Grievous ensured they failed.

He couldn’t see the harsh angles of Republic starships as they flashed into high orbit, casting shadows on their intended prize. He did when they came crashing down. They expected a fight over the planet, a brutal engagement between fleets as had become the norm since the first droid fell. They found nothing but harmless satellites, one or two of which possessed excellent tracking instruments. The data it collected was invaluable to the waiting flotilla a short jump away. According to remote cameras, the Republic task group hardly had enough time to turn around when they realized it was a trap.

\---

The light of new stars shimmer and fade in his eyes. Ships of all shape and size wither under a barrage of fire, clones sucked out of still glowing holes to suffocate in space with only their armor for coffins. Something slithers along his nerves and the membrane of his gut-sack clenches -- satisfaction. He couldn’t rely on the droids to find their way out of an open crate, but give them the simple data of firing solutions and they knew where to aim their blasters. Point and shoot, the clones did the rest. It was so nice of them to fly in without scouting first.

The Republic would learn, but for now this was his victory.

“Form an array. I want to intercept all signals.”

A tactical droid behind a command console nods, silent commands jumping to subordinates. Grievous turns his eyes away from the viewport, hunger narrowing them. Ships projected by a holoscreen buckle and warp in simulated space. Frigates break away from the slaughter then coalesce in a neat pattern to scan the dying pleas of Republic survivors between them and Talahak. Information flows. Situational reports, contingencies, garbled curses, nothing he cares for, and the cold duranimum of his fingers carve a jagged path down the projector.

“Relay the stream to Dooku and prioritize information pertaining to the task group’s command structure.”

He doesn’t know, can’t be sure, but hopes the Republic in all their self-assured supremacy decided to send some jedi along, right into his hands. More sabers to collect, more bodies to burn; a debt that can never be repaid in full, but that won’t stop him from taking his due. Everything else in the war is incidental.

The droids can handle combing the wreckage for salvage or prisoners; if it did not require thinking, they were up to the task. So he leaves the bridge, curved talons clanking against the walkway. A cruiser had escaped, small transports as well, but most were dead in orbit or plummeting to Talahak. He had done as was expected, and if the objects of his loathing could be found, his reward was the hunt.

The whisper of a breath squeezes through the filter of his mask, cold and dry in the cruiser’s stale air. Were he not personally in command it wouldn’t have an atmosphere at all. Droids had no need for breathing, perhaps their one advantage over clones. All the same, Grievous is thankful for the distinction that separates him from the brainless scrap. A handful of organs are all that spare him from a sterile existence of more wires than nerves; a living casket.

He stops. Around him, his cloak flutters, slipping over smooth metal without a sound. He catches a corner in one hand. He knows it is there because his eyes see it, red inside gold inside red. He can pull one end and feel it tug at his neck.

He cannot feel its softness, but he does remember what it was like to _feel_.

Silk like water, stars on his skin, dry wind choked with dust, ash. There is something more, something just beyond the fog of history, the whisper of a thrill. Fingers, warm and rough, laced with his, not six, but four. There is a name, he knows it, but no memory rises to meet his fumbling recollection. Answers dance just beyond his reach.

Fingers curl hard enough to poke holes through his cloak as Grievous snarls. Metal twined with flesh vibrate to give his frustration a distorted voice. It is his, but not; like his fingers, like his body, familiar yet false.  
  
He moves on, but not before driving a fist into the wall.


End file.
